


no body, no crime

by sparklingspoiler



Series: batfamily-as-civilians au [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Capes, Batfamily as Civilians, Dark Comedy, Discussions of Guilt and Lack Thereof, Family Bonding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Road Trips, family bonding via disposing of a dead rapists corpse together, kind of, promise this is fun I promise!, there is NO RAPE in this fanfic it is just referenced and not against any main character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29455569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklingspoiler/pseuds/sparklingspoiler
Summary: Steph and Tim dispose of a body. It very quickly becomes a family affair.
Relationships: Kyle Rayner/Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, mentions of
Series: batfamily-as-civilians au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163570
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got way out of hand.
> 
> Some advice for fellow writers: do your research before you write 6,000 words of set up for something that couldn't logically happen in real life. I decided to sacrifice realism for symbolism and emotional connections between my versions of these characters. Don't try this at home, kids.

“...I think he did it but I just can’t prove it

I think he did it but I just can’t prove it

I think he did it but I just can’t prove it

No, no body, no crime

But I ain’t lettin’ up until the day I die…”

\- no body, no crime by Taylor Swift

It was eight on a Friday night. Most students had cleared the campus by six, but Steph was still at school, and she was panicking.

Stephanie Brown was no stranger to panic. She wasn’t like Tim, with his fancy psychiatrist and his anti-anxiety meds and antidepressants all lined up in a container labeled with the days of the week, but growing up the way she had, you pick up a few tricks of the trade. She felt all the tell-tale signs of a panic attack coming on; her heart jackrabbiting in her chest, her breath coming out in harsh puffs instead of deep inhales, her hands becoming shaky and slick with sweat.

Steph frantically dug her phone out of her pocket and opened up her contacts app. She hesitated for a moment on the flickering idea of calling 911 but quickly thought better of it. Tim was the second number she had on speed dial, just under her mom, and he picked up on the second ring.

She didn’t let him get a word in. “Are you still on campus?”

Her distress must have shown through in her voice. “Are you okay?” Tim asked, completely ignoring her question. “Do you need me to pick you up?”

Steph made a frustrated noise. She didn’t see any reason to lie. “I’m not okay, and I think I need your help. Where are you?”

He didn’t press. “I’m in the gym. What do you need?”

Steph cringed. ‘In the gym’ was code for ‘making out with Kon and hoping it’s late enough that no one will walk in on us’. “Tell your boy toy to go home,” she said. “We’re gonna be a while. Meet me in Mr. Greene’s office, _now_.” She hung up. There was no reason to give him time to argue or try to squeeze details out of her. Besides, Steph knew Tim would come. He always did.

With that out of the way, Steph had at least five minutes (three if Tim was running) to agonize over how she had managed to completely screw up her life, yet again. The pregnancy she had been able to deal with, to make the best of the situation; this, she feared, there was no coming back from. She had reached the point of no return, and the worst part was, she would do it all over again given the chance. Infinite indescribable feelings were swirling in her chest, but regret wasn’t one of them.

The body hadn’t even cooled when Tim barreled through the door, slamming it behind him. He was only slightly out of breath, and there was a freshly-made hickey visible above the collar of his uniform dress shirt. Tim looked straight at her, his eyes widening when he saw the light film of blood splattered across her face and her white button-down. Only when he followed her gaze downward did he see the body. She heard his gasp, barely audible.

Mr. Greene, their AP US History teacher, had stumbled when she slit his throat and landed on his back on the floor. He had tried desperately to stop the bleeding, and his hand had gone lax on his throat when his heart finally stopped. She watched Tim’s gaze as it skimmed over the wound on his neck and the switchblade lying on the ground, parallel to Mr. Greene’s torso, finally settling on the bleeding around his groin. It was only then that he looked up, back at Steph.

Tim’s voice shook only slightly. “Did he…”

“No,” Steph said immediately. “Not to me, at least. I heard him inviting Jackie to his office after school for ‘extra help’.” Her face contorted in disgust. “I told her to go home. And then I went instead, and I…” She looked down at the body again. Before Tim had arrived, she was doing a pretty good job of pretending it wasn’t there at all, but now her eyes seemed to be drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

“Okay,” Tim said. His expression had frozen over into something unreadable, but she got the impression that he was trying not to throw up. Steph realized that the last dead bodies he had seen were probably Jack Drake and Dana Winters, and this was surely dredging up unpleasant memories. She felt sick, too. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

Steph laughed at him, a little hysterically. “Are you joking?”

Tim grimaced. “Yeah, I know.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts, while Steph continued to try and make eye contact with an unseeing corpse. “Okay,” he repeated when he pulled himself together. “Steph, why didn’t you wait? We were collecting evidence. We were making a case. You didn’t have to do this.”

Steph scoffed. “I had to. I wasn’t gonna let him get away with assaulting another girl.”

“Where did you even get the knife? Last I checked, switchblades are illegal in New Jersey!”

Steph shot him a deadpan look. “Tim, my dad? Do you know who my father is?”

Tim nodded at that, considering, and then crumpled. “We were collecting evidence,” he said again.

“Are you saying you would have let someone else get raped just so you could have more _evidence_? I don’t regret this, Tim. No one else is gonna get hurt by him again.” He still looked conflicted, so she kept going. “Tim, the girls he chose are on scholarships. Do you really think they were gonna ruin the chances they’ve been given by going to the police with this? Who knows if the cops would believe them anyway. Knowing Gotham, they probably would have laughed in their faces. And I’m on a scholarship too. I’m a senior, I want to study medicine in college, and there was no way I could accuse him of anything and come out unscathed. This was the best solution.”

He looked less conflicted and just sad, so she used her trump card. “How long until he went after me, Tim?” He flinched, and Steph knew she had him.

They stood in silence for a moment, turning the situation over in their heads. “We need to get rid of the body,” Tim said abruptly. “There’s no way we can claim self-defense for this. You practically cut his dick off, Steph.”

She smiled weakly at him. “It felt good, too.”

Tim shook his head, but he was smiling now too. “I don’t doubt it.” He took a shaky breath. “We need to get rid of the body and the murder weapon, and I can call in a favor with Babs. There’re no cameras around here, so there’s no footage of you entering the office, but we’ll both be caught walking out of the building. We’ll make sure it looks like we both left campus at around four. You’ll still need an alibi, though. I can-”

Tim was interrupted by a familiar voice, loud and clear even through the barrier of the door, and Tim and Steph both froze. “Replacement, if you don’t get your ass outside and in the car in the next thirty seconds, I’m leaving without you. I have more important things to do than babysit you, and if I find out you’ve been ignoring my texts to make out with your boyfriend I’ll-”

Jason didn't get to voice whatever certainly convoluted threat he had thought up, for at that moment he opened the door and stormed into the room; unlike Tim, whose first priority had been Steph, Jason’s eyes zeroed in on the body immediately. Instead of widening as Tim’s had at the sight, his eyes narrowed. He frowned slightly. It felt like the whole room was holding its breath.

Then, slowly, Jason’s frown mutated into a sharp smile. He looked straight at Steph and said, “Shit, blondie, I didn’t think you had it in you!”

Steph grimaced. “How did you know I did it?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “You’re the one covered in blood, dipshit.” Steph blushed slightly. Once the blood had dried, she had forgotten it was even there.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Tim interjected. “She could have been standing in front of him, and I could have slit his throat from behind.”

“Sure, you could have,” Jason agreed. “But did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” Tim admitted. Now that the initial shock of Jason’s arrival had worn off, Tim mostly looked uncomfortable. He and Jason might have moved past their disastrous beginnings, but Steph knew their relationship was still strained at best. Jason was probably the last person Tim wanted in the room when he was on the verge of flipping out.

“So, what did he do to deserve all the mutilation?” Jason looked entirely too gleeful at the mention of said mutilation. He could almost be mistaken for ecstatic if his grin didn’t have so many edges, and if his hand didn’t curl into a fist while he waited for a response like if he didn’t like the answer, he was going to take a swing at the corpse.

“He was a rapist,” Steph said frankly. “But it doesn’t matter now, because he’s dead.”

Jason’s hand swooped up strangely, like he was making to reach for a high-five but thought better of it and changed his trajectory at the last moment. Steph thought he was being entirely too blasé about the whole bloody situation, but she also thought that of all of Tim’s older siblings that could be picking him up today, Jason was the most convenient. Cass would have helped them, no questions asked, but Steph wasn’t positive that Cass had the experience with cleaning up evidence that Steph was sure Jason had (though she wouldn’t put it past Cass). And Dick was a former _cop_. This was a best-case scenario, in Steph’s eyes.

“Will you help us get rid of the body?” Steph asked. She took in Tim and Jason’s stares of horror and delight, respectively. “And the murder weapon,” she added like that would ease Tim’s concerns.

“Absolutely” and “absolutely not” were spoken at the same time. Tim continued, speaking directly to Jason. “This is our problem. You have nothing to do with it. You should just go home and pretend you didn’t see anything. Tell B I’m sleeping over at Steph’s.”

“You’re not getting out of this that easily, Replacement. You and your BFF just became a whole lot more interesting. And besides, you’re gonna need me if you want even a chance of getting away with this.”

“He has a point, Tim,” Steph cut in. Tim shot her a betrayed look. “This is kinda his area of expertise!”

“Hey!” Jason said. “I’m not an assassin or anything. But it’s true that I have specialized knowledge and skills that might help you get through this rough patch.”

‘Rough patch’ Tim mouthed incredulously. Then he let out a sigh of defeat. “It’ll be a good bonding experience, at least.”

“That’s the spirit!”

* * *

Steph asked if she should clean herself up, but Jason told her not to. “No matter what we end up doing, we’re gonna be movin’ this lump of flesh somewhere else,” he said. “Don’t bother cleaning up yet.”

Tim assured them that all the janitors and guards were home for the holiday weekend. Steph frowned at the laughable security but came to the conclusion that if a school this rich and elitist got robbed or vandalized, it served them right. The three of them brainstormed how to dispose of the body. Steph’s initial suggestion of ‘dissolve it in acid like in Breaking Bad’ was promptly shut down. Jason and Tim began shooting ideas at each other, rapid-fire.

“We could throw it in the harbor?” Jason began.

“No, they can comb through the water and find it. We could bury it?”

“A waste of time. If you’re really attached to the idea, we _could_ cut the body into pieces, and bury those. It would be easier.” Jason looked entirely too thrilled by the thought.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to stomach that. What if we-” Tim was cut off by the shrill sound of a text notification. Jason dug his phone out of his pocket, and when he saw the text on the screen, his face went white. It was the first time he had shown any kind of fear since happening upon the situation.

“Shit. Fuck.”

“Who is it?” Steph asked. “What does it say?” Tim asked, at the same time.

Jason gritted his teeth. “It’s the demon brat. I completely forgot about him. He’s in the car. Well,” he amended, “he says he’s tired of waiting. He’s on his way in right now.”

Steph and Tim shared twin glances of terror. “Oh my god,” Tim said. “Murphy’s law. I should have fucking known this was going to happen.”

“No time to worry about that. What do we do? Should we hide the body?”

“Steph, you are literally covered in blood. The floor is _covered in blood_. I don’t think the body is the only issue here.”

“Well, what do you think we should do, genius?”

Tim didn’t get to give a suggestion. “Todd, if you haven’t managed to wrangle Drake into submission, I swear I will-” For the second time that night, a surely-convoluted threat was cut off by the sight of a dead body. “What the fuck?” Damian said.

“Language, you little shit,” Jason said reflexively. Steph and Tim were too busy stewing in their renewed panic to call him out on his hypocrisy.

“What is going on here?” Damian demanded. “Who did Todd kill?”

Steph narrowed her eyes. “Jason didn’t kill anyone. I did this.” She took in Jason and Tim’s incredulous looks. “What? The body is right in front of him. I don’t think we should be throwing out lies right now.” She thought, once again, that this was not a worst-case scenario. She was a little worried about Damian’s reaction, but she could at least count on him to not run screaming or tattling immediately. 

Steph could see Damian’s brain working overtime, trying to process the situation. Eventually, he nodded severely. “This is not a bad job, Brown. You could have foregone the post-mortem mutilation, and a severed throat causes an unnecessary mess, but it’s passable, for your first time.” 

“Hey! How did you know this was my first?”

Damian rolled his eyes at her, a gesture he had picked up from Tim. Steph hated when he did that. Damian might be eleven years old, 145 cm tall, and 43 kilograms soaking wet, but he still managed to make her feel condescended to. “It’s obvious, Brown.” Steph wondered why she was upset that an elementary school kid could tell she wasn’t a killer.

Jason seemed to physically snap out of whatever trance he was in. “Damian, get back in the car. I’ll be there in a-” he paused. “You’ve been pestering me to let you drive since I picked you up. Why don’t you just drive yourself home and pretend you didn’t see anything?”

“Jason,” Tim hissed. “He’s eleven! Can his feet even reach the brakes?”

Damian scoffed. “Tt. Which one of us failed the driving test three times in a row? I’m certain it wasn’t me.”

Tim gawked at him. “You haven’t even taken it! You’re eleven!”

“And yet I’m still better than you at everything. Pitiful, really. I guess it really is a lie that age begets experience.”

“That’s enough!” Jason said. “You need to leave now, demon brat. We’ve got plans, and those plans don’t involve you. You can’t help us.”

Steph didn’t even have to guess what Damian’s response would be. Jason had chosen the worst possible combination of words; Damian hated being told that he couldn’t do a job. It just made him even more eager to prove the person wrong.

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s obvious that I’m the only person who can take care of this. None of you imbeciles have even close to the knowledge and ability needed to resolve the situation. I’m going to stay, and I’m going to take care of it. Whether you want me to or not.” Steph saw her frustration mirrored in Tim and Jason’s eyes. None of them had the skillset to convince Damian to let anything go, much less this; that was an ability that only Dick seemed to possess. They were stuck.

Damian turned to Steph, somehow assuming she was the person he needed to convince. “You want me with you on this, Brown.” Steph’s mind suddenly conjured the image of eleven-year-old Damian as a salesman, trying to sell her a car, which was also himself. The image broke apart as quickly as it came. “I have experience dealing with dead bodies.” Disturbing and sympathy-inducing, but it would come in handy. “I can bolster your alibi.” More people advocating for her whereabouts could only be a good thing. “And,” Damian prepared to lay down his trump card, “if you do not let me assist you, I will tell Father what I’ve seen and learned here today. I think we all know Father doesn’t think highly of you. I’m sure he won’t hesitate to inform the police of your misdemeanor.”

It was a well-thought-out argument, to be sure. Steph wondered why he even wanted to get involved in the shitstorm they were trapped in. A possible reason came to her, along with another wave of sympathy. Despite his shortcomings, Damian really was always trying to do better, but there had to be some situations he must feel more equipped to handle and provide assistance with than others; this could be one of them. He seemed to her to be less someone believing he was entitled to control the situation and more a kid offering to help in the only way he knew how.

“Okay,” Steph decided. “You can help.” She ignored Jason and Tim’s protests. “So, what do you think we should do with the body?”

* * *

They decided to burn it. “Efficient and complete,” Damian had described the method. “We shall burn the body, and if there is anything left besides ash, we bury it.”

With that decided, they sprung into action. Tim had a copy of the key to every room on campus, because of course he did, and he hurried to grab cleaning supplies from the janitor’s closet. Jason and Steph had the most muscle, so they worked together to carry the body to Jason’s car. Jason assured her that there was an easily-disposable tarp already spread out in the trunk. Steph decided not to question it. Damian stood in the corner of the office and scowled. He had been upset when she told him there wasn’t anything for him to do just yet.

Steph finally felt herself crack, carrying a dead body through the hallway. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done, and I once carried out a citizen’s arrest on my father.”

Jason snorted. Then he seemed to take in her pale face and wide eyes, and his expression softened. “Hey, for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t stress over the deed itself. You did the right thing. Some people will never learn the error of their ways, for whatever reason. And sometimes death is the best teacher. You shouldn’t waste your time feeling guilty.”

Steph nodded. She wasn’t exactly feeling guilty, but she appreciated his attempt at comfort. She studied him as they walked. Jason Todd, the prodigal son. He was probably the member of the Wayne family she knew the least well; he was still mending fences with most of the family, and he wasn’t often at the manor or hanging around Tim or Cass, who Steph spent the most time with. Her first impression of him hadn’t been the best; Tim’s frightened call to her after the attack left little room in her heart for forgiveness. But she had softened to him over time, as Tim relayed how he truly was trying his best to make up for his past mistakes and earn back his spot in the family (no matter how much Bruce and Alfred insisted he had never lost it). Steph was sympathetic to him, nowadays, but she had come to realize they were more alike than she was comfortable with, and so she had gone a little bit out of her way to avoid him. This was the first chance they had ever gotten for a one-on-one conversation, and she realized she didn’t want to waste it.

“What about you?” Steph blurted out. “Do you feel guilt?”

She cringed immediately. That was just about the jerkiest possible way she could have phrased that question. Jason just laughed before she could apologize. “You’ve got balls, asking me of all people that question. I like you.” Steph decided that yes, she did covet the approval of her best friend’s enigmatic criminal older brother. “Of course I feel guilt. That’s a healthy fuckin’ emotion. It means your sense of empathy is still intact. You should feel guilty about the things you’ve done wrong. I’ve got way too many things to regret about the way I’ve treated my family, my friends, even Tim.” Steph wished Jason would call Tim by his name to his face, but this was a good first step.

“But about other things I’ve done… no, I don’t feel guilty. I don’t care about what the law says, or the general population. The only person who gets to decide the severity and necessity of my actions is me, and when it comes to most of the people I’ve hurt, I’ve got no regrets. It was the right thing to do. Just like you killing this bastard was the right thing to do.”

Jason’s articulateness surprised Steph. She had assumed, obviously wrongfully, that because he came from the same part of town that she did, and he was some degree of mentally ill, that Jason would be quicker to anger, and less reflective. She realized she didn’t really know him at all. “Isn’t that just a little presumptuous of you? I think the general population and the law’s opinion matter more than you think.”

“Maybe it is. But I don’t really care. You gotta earn the right to sway my moral code. Bruce might have earned that by now, but the law and the average US citizen certainly fuckin’ haven’t.”

“Fair enough.” Jason studied her for a moment. Steph was willing to let it go, but she wasn’t sure she really got his point. From the look on Jason’s face, he realized that.

“Okay. Time to switch tactics. So the other day, my fiance and I, we got into a huge-ass fight-”

“I’m sorry, _fiance_?”

“Right, you guys don’t know about that. Well, I guess you’ll be the first. I’m engaged. I decided not to tell the rest of this batshit family about it because I knew they would make it into a bigger deal than it is and probably scare him off. I love Kyle, but I don’t like his chances when faced with the full force of the Wayne family. I think Bruce alone might send him running for the hills.” Steph was still processing this unexpected news, but Jason only sighed and continued. “That was part of what we were fighting over. He was upset that he’s never met my family and knows next to nothing about them, even though he knows that my relationship with them is strained, and I was upset that his job occupies 90% of his time and he’s barely around when he’s working. So we were both going at each other’s throats. It was fuckin’ nasty.

“But you know how we didn’t let it tear us apart? We calmed down, we talked, and we _compromised_. He’s gonna spend less time away, and I’m gonna introduce him to the family.” Steph shot him a dubious look. “ _Eventually_ ,” he conceded.

“Well, good job not destroying your relationship. What does any of this got to do with me?”

“I was getting to that part. What you need is to _compromise_. Not with anyone else, but with yourself. You’ve got two sides warring in your head: one that knows that what you did was right, and doesn’t regret it, and one that’s worried about how other people are gonna react. I mean, people who aren’t batshit crazy like we are. You gotta find a happy medium. Find a way to balance it all. Acknowledge that what other people think matters because of course it does! You don’t deserve to let this destroy your life, and if it gets out, _it will_. But you can know that the opinions of the law and everyone else matter without internalizing those opinions. They might matter when it comes to your future, but the only opinion that you should internalize is _yours_. Well,” he conceded, “and mine. And that voice in your head agrees with me. You did nothing wrong, and you shouldn’t let this drag you down.”

“Jason, I… thank you.” He smiled a little unnervingly at her. Steph turned his words over in her mind. They weren’t particularly life-changing but delivered in Jason’s deep, raspy voice, with the same inner-city accent that she spoke with, they were surprisingly comforting. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

The two of them arrived at Jason’s car and leaned the body against the side so Jason could open the trunk. They had a surprisingly easy time stuffing the body in; true to his word, there was a plastic tarp to rest it on. By the time the trunk door clicked shut, both Steph and Jason’s hands and shirt sleeves were saturated with blood.

“That was the easy part, kid. You sure you want to go through with the rest of this? I can do it by myself. It’s the least I can do for the replacement.”

“I’ll do it,” Steph said immediately. “I might not have done anything wrong, but this dead guy is still my responsibility. And besides,” she flashed a patented Stephanie Brown Smile at him. “It’s good bonding, right?”

He chucked. “That it is. Who knew all it would take was a murder to make us say more than ten words to each other?”

When they arrived back at the office, Tim was hard at work cleaning the blood off the floor, desk, and wall. He looked up when they walked in. “There you guys are. I’ve been all alone over here.”

Jason looked around. “Where’s the demon brat?”

“I gave him a key and sent him over to the gym to take a shower and find clothes for us to change into. He was driving me nuts with all his sulking. You guys should go join him; I’m almost done here. I think another set of hands would just slow me down.” Steph didn’t doubt it. Tim was a notorious stress cleaner, a fact only exacerbated by his OCD. It would have been endearing had she not once arrived home one day during finals week to find every object in her room and piece of clothing in her closet rearranged by color. Steph lived in a state of organized chaos, and it had taken a week to mess up her room until she was comfortable again.

She was a little bit stressed about the idea of Damian roaming free on campus, and from the looks of it, Jason was too. They left Tim to his cleaning and made the trek across the quad to the gym. The door was unlocked, and they could hear a shower running in the boys’ locker room.

Steph took one look at the clothing laid out on the benches in the locker room and scoffed loudly. “It’s February! He doesn’t really expect me to wear this outside, does he? My legs are gonna freeze off!”

“You need to build up resistance to extreme weather if you want to go anywhere in life, Brown!” Damian called over the rush of the shower.

“No, I don’t!” Steph screamed back. “I am not a vigilante or an assassin. I am a teenage girl, and I- I-” she trailed off into a frustrated babble. This whole situation had gotten away from her. She had started out the night trying to do some good; she never would have imagined her admittedly drastic actions would lead to her own personal episode of ‘Keeping Up With The Waynes’. She wondered who would pop up next - Cass? Dick? Hell, Duke could still be at school, just waiting to walk in on their motley crew. She wouldn’t even be surprised.

Steph sighed and grabbed the cheerleading uniform in front of her. “I give up. I’m gonna take a shower.”

Looking at herself in the mirror afterward, she had to admit that at the very least, she looked good. Steph didn’t know if she had what it took to be a cheerleader, but with an outfit like this, she would at least consider it. She just wished, irrationally, that the skirt was at least knee-length. Her winter coat would be enough to shield her bare midriff from the worst of the elements, but her legs would have to fend for themselves.

It was all worth it, though, seeing Jason in a Gotham Academy uniform three sizes too small. She cursed the fact that Damian had avoided getting blood on his clothes. She would have killed for the chance to see him drowning in a dress shirt and slacks. It would serve the demon brat right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback make my day <3
> 
> The second chapter is basically done and should be up tomorrow or the day after. The third one might take a little longer, but not that much. Look forward to it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: mentions of animal death and gratuitous references to Russian literature.

The drive out of Gotham quickly became the most awkward road trip of Steph’s life. The premise was already absurd; a road trip to burn the body of a rapist she had killed, accompanied by her ex-boyfriend and the two most antagonistic members of his family, was not something she had on her bucket list. In practice it was even worse; before they even started the car, Tim and Damian almost came to blows over who would sit in the front seat. Steph would have argued that _she_ deserved the spot, but even she knew that putting Tim and Damian in the backseat together was asking for trouble. Damian ended up winning the debate (or, more accurately, Tim gave up trying to resist). At one point, not ten minutes into the unbearable silence of the drive, Jason turned on the radio. Steph gave them props; Tim and Damian didn’t let the fact that they were on opposite sides of the car stop their blows from connecting. It turned out that Damian had very specific opinions on The Eagles, which Tim did not agree with. Steph privately thought that Damian was right, but she wouldn’t dare voice it; she enjoyed having Tim as a best friend.

Jason shut off the radio after that. Aside from the singular instance of violence, the four of them spent the hour and a half-long ride in tense silence. Even Jason seemed anxious; early on he opened a window and began chain-smoking cigarettes into the night. Half an hour in, Tim fell asleep, his head resting on Steph’s shoulder.

They finally stopped at a gas station a good 75 miles outside of Gotham. Steph straightened up and shook Tim awake. Initially, Jason and Steph planned on going in, as the two least recognizable people in the car, but the violence that had ensued in the past hour forced them to reconsider leaving Tim and Damian alone. Two Wayne siblings in the store would multiply the chance of recognition, since people were more likely to recognize them in groups, so it was decided that Steph and Damian would go in; Damian fit in the niche of being too new to the Wayne family to be truly recognizable but not new enough to be in the media spotlight (that spot belonged to Duke, who took it in stride).

Damian and Steph got out of the car, but instead of going into the gas station, Damian pulled her around to the back of the building. Steph figured that Jason and Tim had probably seen him do it, and if they hadn’t come running, she didn’t have anything to worry about.

Damian stared at Steph with intense eyes. She contemplated him for a second. Damian had somehow ended up one of the Wayne children she was closest to, just after Tim and Cass. Like Jason, he’d had a rocky start with the family, and also like Jason, his attacking Tim hadn’t earned any points with her. But she had seen firsthand as Dick’s magic took effect; Damian slowly softened up into the arrogant but harmless kid he was now, and somewhere along the way, Steph had gained a little brother. She enjoyed bantering endlessly with him, and for all her teasing, Steph was proud of Damian and how far he’d come. She had the sudden thought that what happened tonight might set their relationship back a few steps; one of the first things Bruce had instilled in Damian when he arrived in Gotham was a no-kill rule that he now adhered to religiously. He insisted it was out of respect for his father, but Steph was sure Damian was relieved that killing wouldn’t be a part of his new family life; it wasn’t and had never been in his nature. She knew him to be almost pathological in his newly-acquired determination to do no harm; one too many arguments over rescuing zoo animals had convicted her of that.

But Damian had no plans to cast aside his older sister. He broke the tense silence after a moment. “If you find you need someone to talk to about this, Brown… I’ll listen to your whining.”

She blinked at him, shocked. Of all the things she had imagined Damian offering, stilted comfort was not one of them. “Thank you, Damian. I might take you up on that… though I don’t think I should be dumping my problems on a kid.”

“Tt. I only offered because I thought I might have insight into some of your feelings right now. I remember-” he stopped himself for a moment. “I remember that my first kill was the worst one.” Damian took a deep breath. “For my first time, Grandfather made me slay a rabbit. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and one of the things I regret the most. So I understand how hard this can be.”

Steph gasped sharply. “Damian, I-” She sighed. If they were having this conversation she might as well go all in. “It’s not at all the same thing. You didn’t have a choice, and you killed… you killed something innocent. The man I killed was a piece of trash and he deserved to die. So I don’t know why-” Steph blinked back a sudden wave of tears, surprised by how fast it had come on. “I don’t know why I feel like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I did the right thing.”

Damian nodded. “I’ve doubted your judgement before, Brown, more often than not. But on this I have full faith in your ability to make the right call. If you thought he deserved to die, he deserved to die.” Somehow the straightforward way Damian spoke was more reaffirming than anything Jason had said in her last conversation about guilt. “I’ve learned that murder is not a natural thing. Some people deserve to die, but no one deserves the burden of murder placed upon them.” He paused, then amended, “well, Grandfather makes a case for it. But I know him to be in the vast minority, in all aspects of the way he lives.”

This was the most information Damian had ever offered Steph about his life before coming to live with the Wayne family. She had a good picture, pieced together by information Tim, Cass, and Dick had offered up, and things she had been able to guess herself, but Damian was always tight-lipped, and she had no reason to force him to tell her about any of it; she could do her part by making him smile, just a bit, and indulging his arrogance without encouraging it. But now it was clear that she’d earned his trust; it was simultaneously a boost to her ego and a heavy burden, the idea that she could be a confidant for this traumatized child. The idea that she was someone important and coveted enough to be vulnerable around. She’d thought that no one but Dick would be able to fill that role in Damian’s life.

“I had to do it,” Steph said. “No one else was gonna do it but me, and it had to be done.”

Damian looked sadly at Steph, wise beyond his years. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Steph blinked back another wave of tears. “It’s alright. Let’s go inside and get our shit so we can put this behind us and move on with our lives.”

“Don’t expect to just be rid of this once you’re rid of the body, Brown. That’s a foolish thing to think, and you’re not as much of a fool as you want people to believe.”

Steph sighed. “I know. I still think I’ll feel better about it after, though.” She processed his words. “Wait, was that a compliment? From you? From the demon brat himself?” She put on an exaggerated face of shock. “Prove to me you aren’t a clone, now.”

Damian rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Stop with the dramatics. My statement was well-earned, but it can be lost just as easily.”

Steph grinned at him. “Yeah, but you’re never gonna take it back. Face it, you love me.” She shoved him a bit.

Damian rolled his eyes again, but the corners of his lips turned up in an approximation of a smile. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Thank God for rural New Jersey gas stations, Steph thought; they were able to find a shit-ton of firewood, gasoline, matches, newspapers, water, and four shovels with ease. The girl at the counter had pale skin that rivaled Tim’s ghostly coloring and flaming red hair. Her name tag read “Blake, she/her”. Blake barely batted an eye at the shit Steph dumped on her; she simply dogeared her page in a battered paperback and sighed, beginning to scan the items and put them in plastic bags. “Will that be all?” Blake asked, and almost didn’t sound bored out of her mind.

“Yep,” Steph said, and tried to ignore the way her hands had begun shaking again. They had agreed not to make any conversation in the store, so they didn’t draw attention to themselves; Steph didn’t know what compelled her to add, “we’re going camping.”

Blake lit up, a whole-body change in attitude that made Damian elbow Steph in the side. “Really?” Blake asked. “I thought you were part of a cheerleading team or something. You know, that outfit doesn’t really scream ‘pitching a tent’ to me.” Steph pulled her jacket tighter around her body. She was going to kill Damian. “ You know, people don’t really go camping during the winter, but I like it. The cold is really refreshing. Where are you staying? I know all the campsites in a 50-mile radius of here.” Blake blushed. “I’m kind of a nerd for this stuff. I love the outdoors.”

Shit, Steph thought. Shit shit shit. She didn’t know anything about Bumfuck, New Jersey, and though he wasn’t showing it, there were things even Damian didn’t know; Steph was sure this was one of them. Her palms began to shake harder. “Um, I don’t know what it’s called. I mean, I don’t think we’re going anywhere official; my older brother knows a guy who owns some land around here, and we’re staying there.”

“Oh. That’s super cool.” Steph observed Blake shrink back a little. She could tell Blake was the kind of person who wanted to help, someone who rarely got a chance to talk about her passions, and felt bad. If it had been any other day Steph wouldn’t have cared, but for some reason, she felt unbelievably guilty about the way she’d made Blake retreat back into herself.

“What’re you reading?” Steph asked. She could practically feel Damian bristling behind her, but ignored him with a grace she hardly possessed.

“ _Crime and Punishment_ ,” Blake mumbled, then straightened up a bit. Maybe she’d also seen the opportunity to wake herself up. “I have to read it for school. It’s kind of dry, but the used copy I found has all these strange asides. I’m having fun just reading what this person wrote in it.”

“Dostoyevsky. A little rudimentary. I suppose you’re taking a Russian Literature class?” Damian sounded unimpressed. Both girls blinked at him.

“Yeah, I am,” Blake said. “I’m studying engineering, but I’m only a freshman and they still make you take some kind of English elective. I thought it would be interesting.” She snorted. “It’s not, but my advisor said I might as well stick with it. I like reading.”

Steph nodded. “What do you mean, asides? The person who had the book before you annotated it? That seems like a nice shortcut. You’ve got all the important bits singled out already.”

Blake laughed. “It is nothing like that. I swear the person wasn’t actually reading the book. They were using it to write down reminders. Like, ‘call Joseph at 6 tomorrow’ or ‘pick up dinner for Alicia when you visit tomorrow’. It’s fun to try to piece together what their life is like.”

Steph hummed, more than a little entranced by the freckles that dotted Blake's face. “So, were they missing out? Is the book okay? I mean, I know you said it’s dry, but sometimes there's still something worth it in things like that.” Steph wasn’t much for reading. She enjoyed fast-paced mystery novels and the occasional young adult romance, but she couldn’t really picture herself enjoying Dostoyevsky. Still, she wanted to keep the conversation going. This was the most normal she’d felt in hours and she didn’t want it to end.

“No, you’re right,” Blake agreed. “I don’t really enjoy reading the book but I like thinking about it. There are some really interesting themes.”

“Like what? I’ve never read any Russian lit.”

“It’s about guilt,” Damian interrupted. “About a destruction of the mind brought about by guilt.”

Blake looked completely blindsided. Steph supposed Damian had that effect on everyone. “You’re right. I mean, he’s right. The main character commits murders and spends the rest of the novel flipping out. I’m not done with the book, but I’m pretty sure that his punishment isn’t supposed to be jail or anything; it’s his own mind punishing him with intense guilt. So the actual punishment the law gives him will probably seem lenient in comparison to the stress of trying to keep his crimes secret.”

“Finish the book. You’re leaving things out,” Damian chided. “Raskolnikov kills because he believes himself superior to the rest of humanity and above the law, not for any noble reason; that’s important. And you’re forgetting a critical theme of the novel: isolation. Raskolnikov spends the whole story pushing away the people who try to help him, which only drives him deeper into guilt and despair. His isolation is the only reason he’s able to descend so far. It’s only once he allows his true love to help him that he lets go of his pride and feels relief from his crushing guilt.”

Steph pretended to feel her phone vibrate in her pocket, and took it out to stare at a screen empty of notifications. “Shit, my brother is pissed at me for spending so much time here. Sorry, how much is it?”

Blake smiled at her. “No need to apologize, I get it.” She named a price and Damian handed over two hundred dollar bills without a second glance. Steph couldn’t imagine spending over one hundred dollars on anything but groceries. She supposed they had picked up way too much firewood.

Blake paused as she was handing over the change. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“I’m Morgan.”

Blake nodded. “Wait just a second?” She scribbled something down on a notepad and ripped the page out, handing it over to Steph. “My number. If you’re ever in the area again. Or if you just want to talk.”

Steph blushed lightly. “I’ll think about it,” she lied.

Damian yanked Steph back behind the building the minute the door closed behind them. “You’re an imbecile,” he said.

Steph sighed. “I know. I know. That was stupid of me. It was a stupid thing to do.”

Damian frowned but nodded. “As long as you are aware,” he said.

They made their way back to the car. Sometime during their mini-argument, it had started to drizzle. “Not enough to disturb our mission,” Damian assured. Steph still took it as an omen of more trouble in their future. She recalled Damian’s earlier words and knew things couldn’t stay easy forever.

* * *

Supplies acquired, they settled back in for another hour of driving. Steph hadn’t technically lied to Blake the gas station attendant about their destination; Jason really did insist that a friend of a friend of a friend owned land that would be safe to burn the body on, and nobody had any better ideas.

“What the fuck took you guys so long?” Jason said.

Damian scoffed. “Brown was flirting with the attendant. Don’t worry, I already scolded her for the colossal idiocy she was showing.” Steph appreciated that he was trying to spare her Jason’s wrath.

His efforts were wasted; Jason ignored Damian and cursed loudly. “Do you know what unmemorable means?”

“It’s fine. We talked for a bit about a book and she gave me her number. It’s not like anyone gives their phone number to random girls in gas stations and actually expects them to call back, right?” Steph wasn’t confident. A girl in a skimpy cheerleading outfit in the middle of winter and an elementary school kid who read Dostoyevsky were not something one forgets easily.

“That’s not something you’d be thinking about if you hadn’t talked to her at all.”

Steph didn’t say anything back. She was preparing for another potentially violent car ride (or worse, another anxiously silent one) when they hit the next snag in their plan.

Tim was on his phone, pleading over text for Babs to help them out, no questions asked, when it started blaring ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid. “Cass,” he said.

Jason hissed, “don’t answer it, idiot,” just as Tim motioned to accept the call. Tim glared at him.

“It’s Cass! I can’t ignore her!”

Jason banged his head against the steering wheel as Tim accepted the FaceTime request. He angled it so that he and Steph were both in the frame.

Cass’s face, serene as ever, lit up at the sight of them. “Steph! I didn’t know you were with Tim!”

Steph tried to smile at Cass, but it came off as weak, even to her. She couldn’t imagine what her posture was telling Cass about her precarious mental state. Tim seemed to have the same idea. “Cass,” he said, “we’re about to enter an area with bad reception. The call will probably go easier if we switch to just audio.” No matter how often he did it, Steph was always amazed at Tim’s ability to lie, flawlessly. He didn’t seem to have any tells at all. The only person who could catch him in a lie was Cass, who decided to let this one go; she frowned but nodded. Tim switched the call from FaceTime to audio-only. Steph felt bad about depriving Cass of a view of their faces and body language, recalling her issues with reading tone and spoken language in general, but it was for the greater good; Cass would have figured out something was wrong almost instantly if they had kept the camera on.

“Little brother,” Cass started, “Dad is worried. You, Jason, and Damian never came home, and none of you are answering his texts or calls.”

Tim and Steph exchanged frantic looks. Then Tim schooled his face into neutrality, and his voice took on an annoyed but playful tone. “Jason kidnapped us. He said he wanted to take us on a road trip, you know, family bonding. For the holiday weekend. Steph was just collateral damage.” It was a good lie, with just enough hints of the truth to be believable. Jason took one hand off the steering wheel and signed, ‘why are you throwing me under the bus?’ Steph knew he would get over it eventually.

Cass made a humming noise of acknowledgement. “I’d expect you to put up more of a fight,” she said.

Tim cringed. “Well, you know me. I’m all about family bonding.”

“Uh-huh. With Jason and Damian.”

“Yes?” Steph took back everything she had ever said about Tim’s ability to lie. She saw Jason light a cigarette and blow smoke out of the open window; clearly, he didn’t have much faith either.

“Sure.” Cass did not sound convinced, but she continued, “so, Steph, how are you?”

It was the perfect question, and Steph took full advantage of it. If there was one thing she could do, and do well, it was talk, talk, talk. Taking up space and time was practically her superpower. So she began describing every detail of her day, from the coffee she drank in the morning that she poured way too much creamer into to the meeting with her advisor about college that she thought might actually make her break out into hives. It was grounding, in a way, to recount her day to Cass like she’d done so many times before; to remind herself that she had a life outside of this crime and that that life would go on no matter what. It was the same feeling she had while talking to Blake; the reminder that she was still capable of some semblance of normalcy. She wasn’t completely ruined yet.

Damian cut in when Steph began talking about biology. “I assume you refused to dissect the frogs?”

Steph winced. “Damian… it wasn’t like they were alive. They were defrosting when class started. And I kind of wanted to, uh, see what it would be like...” Damian’s dark complexion turned ashen and he whipped his head away from her. So killing a human being wasn’t a dealbreaker, but dissecting a dead frog was? “I’m sorry,” Steph said, though she didn’t really mean it. “Next time we go to the zoo we’ll see how many cages we can open before security gets involved.” She had already started her life of crime with the worst possible one; that seemed tame in comparison.

Damian nodded. “As an apology, that will suffice. I shall bring my lockpicking kit.”

“Let me help,” Cass said. “I can also pick a lock.”

“Me too,” Jason cut in. “Sounds like a good time.”

“I mean, I can too, if you need extra hands,” Tim said.

“What is with this family?” Steph muttered.

“Steph, you helped me break into the headmaster’s office like, yesterday,” Tim said. “Face it. You’re just as crazy as the rest of us.” You’re one of us. You’re part of this family. He didn’t say it, but Steph heard it anyway.

Steph cut off her recounting around the time she started planning in earnest to kill Mr. Greene. “...and that was my day!” she finished with a flourish. Cass and Tim both clapped politely.

“Sounds like a good one,” Cass said. “So, when did it go wrong?”

Everyone in the car stiffened. “What do you mean?” Steph said.

Steph could hear Cass’s smile through the phone. “When did your day go wrong? Something happened. You’re all tense. And there’s no way you’re willingly spending time with Jason and Damian, little brother.”

“I’m mending fences,” Tim argued. “I want to get along with my brothers!”

“You want to,” Cass agreed. “But you don’t. So what are you really doing?”

“We’re on a road trip. I wouldn’t lie to you, Cass.”

“Not lying. You’re twisting the truth.”

Jason banged his head against the steering wheel again. “Just tell her something,” he said. “It’s not like you’ll rat us out to Bruce, right, Cass?”

“Depends,” she said, which was code for ‘of course not’.

“We’re… getting rid of some trash,” Tim said generously. “Something we can’t just throw out. We have to deal with it ourselves, and it might take a while. And we can’t do it in Gotham.”

“That’s very specific,” Cass said.

“Don’t worry about it, Cass,” Steph said. “Is what we’re doing technically illegal? Sure. But this really is more of a family road trip than it is committing a crime. We’re multitasking. And Bruce would be proud. Everyone’s getting along! We’ve bonded over a common goal!”

“A common goal of crime.”

“Yes! You know, he should be excited that we’re working together at all.”

“Do you want me to tell him that?”

“What?”

“Tell him that he should be proud you’re working together to commit a crime?”

“Wait. No, don’t tell him that.”

“Mhm-hm.” Cass sounded like she was stifling a laugh.

“Tell him… tell him we’re on a road trip. We’re on a road trip and we’re bonding.”

“I’ll do that. But you know… I’m proud of you guys too. No matter what you’re bonding over, I’m glad you’re bonding.”

Steph smiled. “Somehow I think you’re the only person who’ll see it that way.”

“Have fun on your road trip. I’ll cover for you, little siblings. Don’t kill anyone else.” Cass hung up on them.

The car was silent for a good moment. Then Jason whistled. “That girl is _terrifying_. What the fuck?” He paused. “Did she call me little sibling?”

Tim shrugged. Some of the tension had leaked out of his posture. “You are younger than her, I think.”

“I’ve got a new favorite older sibling, then. Well, Dickface was never in the running, so I guess she was always the default.”

Damian nodded. “A worthy choice. Cain is a fearsome and respected opponent; we could not take her in combat even if we worked together. Be glad she is an ally.”

“I wasn’t planning on fighting her, but now I might have to give it a try.”

Steph and Tim both laughed out loud. “Good luck with that. She’ll destroy you,” Tim said. “Tell me when that goes down so I can bring popcorn and a camera,” Steph said at the same time.

Jason scowled. “No faith. Which one of us is a career criminal and which one is a ballet dancer?”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Cass is gonna kick your ass, and I’m gonna record it and put it on the internet.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “You can try.”

The drive went a lot smoother after that. Steph psychically thanked Cass for smoothing out the tension without even being there; that girl really was magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Jason didn’t seem to be following any kind of GPS, but somehow he knew when to turn off the highway onto a backstreet, and from there onto a dirt road leading into lush woods. Steph shook Tim awake; he’d once again fallen asleep, this time with his head on her lap, stretched out over the entirety of the backseat. Drama queen.

As they drove further and further in the tension began to mount once again. Jason seemed the least affected by the change in tone. Steph wondered how many times he’d driven this way and if the anxiety associated with getting rid of evidence was familiar to him.

After a good while, the trees opened up into a large field overlooking a lake. Jason drove straight ahead and parked the car right in the middle of the field. “Okay,” he said. “Time to get to work.”

It was almost 3 AM and all four of them were exhausted; Jason, especially, since he had been driving for almost five hours straight. The wind had also picked up; Steph was frozen to the bone. It was miserable working conditions. Still, they wanted to get this over with, so they each grabbed a shovel and started digging up grass, creating a vaguely rectangle-shaped patch of just soil. It took them a while to do that; Steph quickly realized just how big their fire would have to be and reassessed the amount of firewood they’d bought, deciding it might not be enough.

Once they were satisfied with their chances of not setting the ground on fire they got to work arranging firewood on the ground. Eventually, there was no prep left to do; they had to get the body.

Steph hadn’t felt sick carrying the body to Jason’s car, hours ago, but something in her careful facade had cracked; she felt nauseous moving Mr. Greene’s corpse onto the pile of firewood. She couldn’t bear to look at his face. The minute she and Jason dropped the body down unceremoniously, she sprinted as far a distance as she could manage before she threw up on the ground. Tim ran after her, placing a comforting hand on her back and rubbing as she spits acid.

“Are you okay?” he asked. She straightened up and glared at him with no real heat. “Sorry, stupid question.”

Steph shook her head. “I don’t know why it just hit me all at once. I was fine with all this at school. I’m still fine,” she assured. “I’ve just never… I have not spent much time dealing with dead bodies. Obviously.” She knew Jason, Tim, and Damian had spent time up close and personal with corpses; Jason and Damian for obvious reasons and Tim had found the bodies of two dead parents.

“It’s okay to not be fine, you know.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “If anyone but you was saying that it’d almost be reassuring.” Tim frowned. “Don’t worry, it’s not really a you thing. None of you guys are capable of expressing your feelings in a healthy way; you guys all worship at the altar of repression.”

“Yeah, and we’re all miserable! Clearly, it’s not working out. I don’t want you to be as terrible at dealing with things as we are.”

“I’m _fine_ .” Steph stalked back toward Jason and Damian, Tim silently following. She didn’t know why Tim’s words struck a nerve; Steph knew she was the well-adjusted one. The emotionally available one. She prided herself on that. Steph had never been one for repression; usually, she swerved in the opposite direction, tending toward big displays of emotion that were a bit _much_. She was always a bit much. So why did she suddenly feel the need to insist she was fine when she obviously wasn’t?

When they got back Jason and Damian had finished setting up the funeral pyre. Jason winced when he took in the slightly green tinge of Steph’s skin. “Are you, uh, good?”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Steph snapped. “Why do you people keep asking me that?”

“If you say so,” Jason said, which was somehow not what Steph wanted to hear. She wanted to beg him to push further. Instead, she stalked off to the car and grabbed the gasoline from the backseat. She approached the body and her heart thudded in her chest.

“Pour directly onto the wood,” Jason called to her. “Don’t let it splash or get in the air.”

This was it. This was going to be the end of everything, the resolution Steph had been waiting for. She felt all the signs of panic in her body - her heart beat fast, her head ached, and her palms were sweaty - but her hands didn’t shake. Her mind was deathly calm as she poured a small amount of gasoline on the body and the firewood. When she was done she ran to where Tim, Jason, and Damian were standing a safe distance away. Once she was standing next to them Jason quickly struck a match and threw it toward the funeral pyre. Steph watched it ignite from somewhere far away and barely felt the blast of heat against her face. She thought she’d be relieved, or unburdened, but she suddenly felt very numb. It wasn’t a nice feeling.

They all stared at the fire. It had been at least three minutes of silence, now, none of them quite sure what to say, if anything. Steph had imagined she’d start seeing results anytime now; she pictured the body crumbling to ash in a matter of seconds. Instead it kind of… bubbled. The skin was melting a little bit, and Steph smelled burning hair, but really nothing much had changed. She felt sick again.

“How long is this supposed to take, exactly?”

Damian opened his mouth to answer, but Tim beat him to it. “I mean, a normal cremation takes two to three hours, but since we don’t have an incinerator and we’re going to have to spend a lot of time keeping the fire hot, it’s probably going to take a lot longer than that. The wind helps, but not that much. I’d say five hours at the least.”

Damian glared at Tim, then sighed. “Drake is right,” he said, a statement Steph didn’t think was in his vocabulary.

Steph and Jason both stared at them. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Steph demanded. “Damnit, I should have picked up snacks and a magazine at the gas station.” She thought for a second. “Wait. Damian, you said this would be ‘efficient and complete’. What part of a five-hour wait is _efficient and complete_?”

Damian scoffed. “Five hours is nothing. It’s not my fault you Americans have no concept of patience.”

“If I’d known this was gonna take _five hours_ ,” Jason seethed, “I would have said to bury the body and be fuckin’ done with it.”

“I mean…” Tim trailed off. “If you really don’t want to wait I can call Kon over here and have him use his heat vision. I didn’t really want to get him involved, but…”

Jason stared at Tim. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I said I didn’t really want to get Kon involved, but he could probably get rid of the body in like, an instant.”

Jason turned to Steph. “Help me out here.”

Steph was confused for a moment but lit up the second she realized the miscommunication. “Kon is Tim’s boyfriend,” she said, delighted. “Tim’s dating Superboy.”

Jason looked like he’d been slapped. “The replacement is dating who?”

Tim’s nose scrunched up, adorably. “Didn’t you know that? Everyone knows that.”

“I did not fuckin’ know that. What the fuck? How did that even happen?”

Tim shrugged like an asshole. “You’re engaged to Green Lantern. How did _that_ happen?”

“How the actual fuck do you know that?” Jason said, just as Steph cried, “Your fiancé is _Green Lantern_?”

“Enough!” Damian cut through their frenzy. “Todd, you are not nearly as subtle as you think you are. I expect that everyone but Father and Richard already knows about your poor taste in life partners. Drake, your brute of a boyfriend is not needed. This is a family affair, and you idiots could all use an exercise in patience.” And that was that.

“So… what are we gonna do for five hours?” The absurdity of the situation dawned on Steph. She’d thought this would bring instant relief, her worries going up in flames with the body, but instead, she’d be stewing in her anxiety for hours. This was going to be miserable.

“I’ve got sleeping bags in the back,” Jason offered. “Roy, Kori, Kyle, and I don’t always have the promise of a place to stay during our, uh, _trips,_ so it pays to have them on hand.”

Steph assumed that ‘trips’ was a tidy way of saying ‘adventures outside of the law’. She didn’t call Jason out on it. Instead, she just sighed. “Sure, why the hell not? This night is already so goddamn weird.”

They laid out the sleeping bags far away enough from the fire to be safe, but close enough that they could still feel the heat of it on their skin. Steph, Tim, and Damian settled in, while Jason took first watch on the fire; they decided to switch off on the official duty of tending to it, but none of them were getting any sleep, so it didn’t really matter.

Steph stared up at the sky, clouds shifting above her. “This is like a fucked up version of camping.”

She could hear a sleeping bag rustle as Tim shrugged. “I wouldn't know. I’ve never been.”

“I haven’t either,” Damian added.

“Me neither.”

Steph stared at the three boys. “How am I the only person here who’s been camping?” She was met with silence, so she continued on. “Okay, Damian, I get. Tim’s parents’ idea of bonding was sending cheques in the mail every other month, so that checks out too. But I mean… Jason?”

Jason shrugged, and the way he went about the gesture was so familiar, so _Tim_ , that Steph actually flinched back. When had he spent enough time with Tim to pick up his mannerisms? Or had Tim picked the action up from Jason, back when he was still a kid, spying on his neighbors and wishing that he could be one of them?

The silence was even more awkward than it had been in the car. Jason obviously wasn’t handling it well. “So, Replacement. Superboy? Really?”

Tim groaned. “Don’t even start. I’ve already gotten talked at by Dick _and_ Bruce. Please tell me you’re not going to offer to beat him up for me.”

Jason laughed. “Fuck no. I’m just thinking, like, from what I know about the guy, isn’t he a bit…”

“Arrogant?” Steph offered. “Flashy? Thinks he’s the star of his own TV show and the rest of us are just supporting characters? Jock-like?”

“Exactly,” Jason said. “I didn’t think that was the kinda guy you would go for, is all.”

“Your first mistake was assuming that Drake has standards,” Damian said.

Tim squinted at Jason. “Have you put a lot of time into thinking about my taste in men?”

“ _Definitely_ not. Just, when Dickface told me you were dating I imagined someone more… nerdy. Like, some kind of genius.”

“Kon is plenty smart! He’s practically a human calculator and encyclopedia. Well, a half-human half-Kryptonian calculator and encyclopedia. And you know… he’s arrogant, sure, but I like that. He’s fun to be around. Balances me out.”

“You’re narrative foils,” Jason said, and then shook his head. “How did you even meet?”

“Ooh,” Steph jumped in. “I can tell this one.”

“No. No way.”

“Come on, Tim. This is my favorite story!” 

Tim groaned again and buried his face in his hands. Jason looked delighted. “Now you gotta tell me,” he said.

“Okay, so, Bruce had some business shit he had to deal with in Metropolis and he made Tim go with him. So Tim made _me_ go with _him_ , so he wouldn’t be bored out of his mind. And you know, it’s no Gotham, but Metropolis always has shit going on. That day it was gigantic fuckin’ robots attacking downtown, for some reason. So one minute Tim and I are getting ice cream and the next minute everyone is screaming and running. I said we should run too, like a sane person, but Tim was so fascinated by these fuckin’ robots, he just _had_ to get up close and personal to one to figure out how they worked. Like a reckless idiot. So one minute he’s gotten picked up by one of these things and he’s dangling in the air, staring down the jaws of death, and the next minute Superboy swoops in and grabs him. He carries Tim bridal style like he weighs fuckin’ nothing which I know for a fact he doesn’t and _winks_ at him. There’re huge-ass robots attacking people and Superboy takes the time to fuckin’ wink at Tim.”

“Shut up,” Tim cuts in. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

“It was _exactly_ like that. So we get a safe distance away and it all dies down, and that would have been that, except we’re sitting on a bench and talking about our brush with death and Superboy just walks right up to us and sits down, and he starts chewing out Tim for walking straight into the fight and we’re just staring at him, cause you know, it’s _Superboy_. Just sitting there. We both listen to him for a while, but we’re not really listening, because he’s built like a Greek god and that’s a little distracting. So we’re mostly staring. And then Tim gets a text from Bruce, you know, ‘tell me you’re alright in the next minute or I’m gonna start calling every hospital in Metropolis’, and so Tim is like, we have to go. And then he fuckin’ _hands Superboy his business card_ and sprints away.”

“You have a business card?” Jason asked at the same time as Damian said, “And Superboy actually _called_?”

“It’s important to be networking at a young age,” Tim said.

“Networking with _superheroes_?”

Tim glared at Jason. “Kon and I are just messing around. At least I’m not engaged to a _cop_.”

Jason seethed. “Green Lantern is not a _cop_. He protects the universe!”

“He’s a space cop!”

“He is _not_!”

“Okay, let’s back up a few steps,” Steph said. “I’m still trying to process the fact that you’re engaged to Green fuckin’ Lantern.”

“I would once again like to ask how the _fuck_ you know about that, Replacement.”

Steph laughed. “I can answer that one for you. One of Tim’s favorite hobbies is figuring out superheroes’ secret identities. He’s been doing it since he was ten.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Kyle Rayner was hardly a challenge. He barely even has a secret identity; it probably doesn’t matter much considering he spends like all his time in space. Speaking of which, you must be in the most long-distance relationship of all time.”

Jason scowled. “I think that might be a sore spot,” Steph stage whispered to Tim. They erupted into giggles.

“I’m not even surprised you have a freaky fuckin’ hobby like that,” Jason said. “What I wanna know is how you even knew I was engaged. I kept that shit under lock and key. One thing,” he lamented. “I just wanted one thing that wasn’t the business of my whole fuckin’ family."

Tim looked at least a little sympathetic. Damian was decidedly less so. “You think far too little of us, Todd. You’re wearing an engagement ring right now. You could have at least tried to be subtle about it.”

“Dickface and B haven’t noticed yet!” Jason argued. “It’s not fair that half of you are child geniuses or whatever.”

“Let me just say that Green Lantern is a way worse choice in partners than Superboy,” Steph said. “I mean, Tim’s right. At least Superboy is entertaining. He wears a studded leather jacket while _fighting crime_. A cop, Jason? Really?” Steph, Tim, and Damian all gave Jason matching judgemental stares.

“I thought he was a starving artist when I met him! And he still kinda is! On Earth at least.”

“Wait,” Tim said. “Doesn’t this mean like half of our family is/has dated a superhero or vigilante?”

Steph thought about it and laughed when she realized Tim was right. “Oh my god! You’re dating Superboy, _you’re_ engaged to Green Lantern, Dick has been going steady with the Flash for ages… didn’t Bruce have a fling with Catwoman at one point?”

“ _Absolutely_. You, Cass, and Duke need to find a superhero to romance, I swear. You know…” Tim paused. “I think I remember Kon telling me that Supergirl was single.”

“Oh, I would absolutely hit that,” Steph said. “She is _fine_. Think you could get Kon to pass her number along?”

“What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t?”

They both giggled, and Jason looked on, a fond expression settling strangely on his face. Damian mostly looked confused, and a little disgusted. Speaking of… “We can’t leave Dami hanging,” Steph said. “There’s gotta be some cute little child soldier we can set him up in a preteen romance with.”

“Absolutely not,” Damian said. “No mere sidekick could ever be worthy of _me_. And besides, there’s already someone I-” He cut himself off, but the damage was already done.

“You have a _crush_?” Steph shrieked. “On who? Who has the great Damian Wayne possibly deemed worthy enough to crush upon? I have to meet them, now.”

Damian blushed, adorably. “You and Richard are the same breed,” he said. “Insufferable.”

“Now I’m kind of curious, too,” Tim said. “I can’t remember the last time you told me you liked someone, much less that you had a _crush_.”

“You’ve already dug your grave, brat,” Jason said. “Might as well lie in it.”

Damian mumbled something unintelligible. “Sorry, could you speak up?” Tim said, like an asshole.

“His name is Colin,” Damian snapped. “He is in the same grade as me at school and he’s superior to all of you in every way.”

“I think you might be biased,” Tim said.

“I’m-” Damian hesitated. “I’m unsure of how to proceed in our relationship. Very recently Colin declared me his best friend. I’m not sure I want to jeopardize that.”

“You clearly like this kid,” Jason said. “I say you go for it. No use waiting. If you know, you know, right?”

Jason’s sarcastic and playful tone went right over Damian and Tim’s heads. “You’re right,” Damian said. “I shall put a plan into action the moment school recommences.”

“Are we scheming?” Tim asked. “I love a good scheme.”

“You gotta let us in on the planning,” Jason said. “Four minds are better than one.”

Damian narrowed his eyes. “Considering what I’ve just heard of Drake’s romantic exploits, the appalling flirting Brown exhibited at the gas station, and your incredibly poor taste in men, I think I’ll decline. Your tactics will likely only work on those lower in brain cells and in standards than Colin.”

Steph started laughing hysterically. She had always been an ugly laugher, ugly crier, ugly _everything_ , but even through her haze, she could recognize she was being a bit much. Everyone turned to look at her, and the shocked and slightly concerned frown on Damian’s face just made her laugh harder.

“Sorry, Dami, it’s not you,” she finally forced out through sharp gasps. “It’s just, we’re all sitting around talking about boys like we’re at sleep away camp and my history teacher’s dead body is burning in the background.” Steph failed to stifle another wave of laughter. She was coming apart at the seams, like a well-loved teddy bear whose stuffing was falling out in clumps.

No one said a word as she continued to fall apart, though Jason fully turned away from the fire to look at her, and Tim and Damian both sat up. Steph stayed lying down, staring at the sky. She’d be hard-pressed to find a single patch of sky in New Jersey that wasn’t polluted, and even way out in the middle of nowhere there was no exception; all she saw was grey, grey, grey. Grey clouds and the smoke from the fire mingled together above her head; Steph wondered just how much they were contributing to the air pollution and laughed harder.

Steph was an idiot. She’d never be able to repress her emotions like the Wayne siblings; this semi-hysterical breakdown was proof of that. They would always spill out of her like stuffing, leaving her hollow and limp. She accepted this and decided to let the breakdown run its course. Her laughter turned to harsh, sharp inhales, and then to quiet sobs that grew louder and louder as the minutes passed. Steph turned over on her side in the sleeping bag so she’d feel better about her chances of not choking on the mucus clogging her throat and nose. Her airways felt blocked, her mind fuzzy, and even though she _knew_ it was all in her head, Steph couldn’t help but think that she was going to die here, suffocating under the weight of her feelings. She wondered why no one was interfering; Steph supposed they had probably never seen this much emotion spill out of another person in their life and had no idea how to deal with it.

This was familiar territory for Steph. She just let herself cry.

Eventually, Tim snapped out of his stupor and moved to lie beside her on the ground, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight through the sleeping bag. “Hey,” he said, “it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Nothing is okay,” Steph cried. “Nothing is ever gonna be okay again.”

“The body’s burning, we cleaned up the office, Babs erased the camera footage. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“How can you _say_ that?” Steph wriggled out of Tim’s grasp and turned to face him. “I always knew I was a fuck-up, but this really is it. I killed someone. I killed him. I’m never gonna be normal again. I’m never going to-” she gasped. “I’m never gonna make it to college. I’ve worked so hard to get here and now I’ve messed up my one chance at making something of my life and I’m gonna go to jail and I’m never gonna be a doctor. I’ll just be white trash forever. The bitch on a scholarship who killed the poor, revered professor in cold blood. I’ve been given so many chances and I’ve just kept tossing them aside like they mean nothing. What’s _wrong_ with me?” She sobbed, desperately.

“Oh, Steph…” Tim looked on the verge of tears himself. He took Steph in his arms once more and she tucked her head under his chin, burying her face in his neck. “You haven’t ruined anything. That’s why we’re doing this. We’re going to fix everything, and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. We are fixing things. Everything is going to work out.”

“You should listen to the kid,” Jason said. His attempt at a light, comforting tone was almost comical. “They tell me he’s some kind of genius.”

“Right,” Steph sniffled. “Because Tim’s had so much experience stressing over his security and his future. Mr. I’ve got two companies just waiting for me to graduate and become CEO. If you ever killed someone Bruce would just pay off the police and be done with it.”

Tim stiffened slightly. “Bruce would do that for you too,” he said quietly. “In a heartbeat.”

Steph scoffed wetly. “Yeah right,” she said. “Damian was right about one thing. Bruce will probably be glad when I’m in prison and I’m no longer around to be a bad influence on his children.”

“I didn’t-” Damian looked stricken. “Those were just words. I didn’t mean them. Father cares for you as if you were his own.”

“But I’m _not_. I’m not his daughter. I’m just someone who showed up one day and started hanging around his kids. He _hates_ me. And he would never get this. He would never get why I needed to do this.”

“Fuck what Bruce thinks,” Jason growled. “Fuck what anyone thinks. Didn’t I tell you the only opinion that matters is yours? Everything else is just noise.”

“You also said that this will destroy my life if it gets out, and you’re right. And it will get out. Who are we kidding? We’re not professionals. You and Dami might have been, but face it, neither of you has killed someone in ages; you’re rusty. Tim cleaned the entire office by himself; there is no way he didn’t miss something. Blake at the gas station is gonna realize something was off with us, or recognize Dami, or _something_ , and they’re gonna find the body and they’re gonna know it was us. You guys might be able to get out of it, but I won’t. And I-” Steph sniffed. “I deserve it.”

“You didn’t deserve to have this happen to you,” Jason said. “No one does.”

“Happen to me? Nothing happened to me. This wasn’t self-defense or anything. I _planned_ this. I sat for hours after school and I thought about it and I planned to kill him. I deserve to feel like shit. I deserve whatever I get. This is my - this is my punishment.”

“No,” Damian interrupted. Steph might tease him about it, might tell him he was too young to be so proud, but the truth was this: Steph admired Damian’s hubris, his blind faith in himself, his ability to speak and be sure of what he was saying, whether he was right or not. And when Damian spoke, Steph listened. “This is no punishment. I won’t - we won’t let it be. Let us help you,” Damian implored. His earnestness made him sound his age.

“I- _We_ love you,” Tim said. “No matter what happens, you won’t be alone. We’ll be with you. We won’t let you go through this alone,” he said like if he repeated it enough times Steph would have no choice but to internalize the sentiment.

“Don’t take these idiots’ word for it,” Jason put in. “I’ve got contacts for anything you need. A criminal lawyer, a discreet therapist, anything. And…” He took a deep breath. “You’ve got me too. You call me, for anything, and I’ll be there. No matter what.”

That was the turning point; something inside Steph clicked. Damian and Tim she got; they really did love her, no matter what Damian might say. But Jason… she had treated him like shit at her worst and avoided him at best. She hadn’t even had a proper conversation with him before today. But his promise - all of their promises - screamed that it wasn’t just discomfort with her emotions or guilt driving their words. They _cared_. Steph let herself believe that they cared. “Okay,” Steph said. “I believe you.” She tried to imbue her words with even a fraction of the comfort and joy the revelation had given her. Tim squeezed her tighter. “Sorry for getting snot and tears all over you,” she said to him.

Tim laughed. “It’s fine. I told you it was better to let things out then repress them.”

Steph poked him in the stomach. “Take your own advice,” she said. Then she sighed. “I don’t know if I really feel better. I feel a bit like I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“What do you need?” Jason pressed. “Anything you need, I’ll make sure you get it.”

“I just want to feel _normal_ ,” Steph said and felt a few straggling tears steak down her drenched face. She rolled over onto her back, but Tim didn’t seem to want to let go of her; he rested his head on her chest and laid an arm over her stomach. “I wish this was just a regular road trip. A regular camping trip.”

“My knowledge of camping indicates that it's not something one usually partakes in in February,” Damian said.

“I think you might have to help us out here,” Tim said. “Since we’ve established none of us have any experience with this. I mean, I’ve seen things in movies…”

“Oh my god,” Steph groaned. “Stop, stop. You’re making me feel worse. Camping is supposed to be _fun_. Life-changing, sometimes. You know, s’mores, and sharing secrets around the fire. That kinda thing.”

“S’mores?” Damian asked. “I’m not familiar with the term or custom.”

“It’s like… you heat up a marshmallow and put it between two graham crackers and chocolate. Some people like the marshmallow heated up until it’s golden brown and some people like to set it on fire; it’s a whole thing. I bet we could find vegan marshmallows if we tried.”

Damian made a face. “That sounds disgusting.”

“They’re actually pretty good,” Tim cut in. “Kon, Bart, Cassie, and I made them once.”

“Please tell me Kon set his marshmallow on fire with his heat vision.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “He insists that’s the best way to do it,” he said with fond annoyance.

“Well, I don’t know if I can manage s’mores. We should probably stick together,” Jason said. “And the closest sign of civilization is dozens of miles away. By design, of course, but it doesn’t really help us here.”

“Probably for the best,” Steph said. “I don’t think roasting marshmallows on this particular fire would make me feel any better. So... we play a game,” she decided. “Share some secrets. Do some more traditional bonding.”

The idea of sharing any kind of secret had all the Waynes stiffening almost imperceptibly. “What kind of game?” Tim asked warily.

“You know, Truth or Dare, Two Truths and a Lie, Never Have I Ever, that kind of thing.”

“Two Truths and a Lie,” Jason said immediately. “I’m not following any kinda dare or answering any questions you ask. You want secrets, you’ll get the ones I volunteer. And I have _trauma_ associated with Never Have I Ever.” He shuddered. “We had to ban targeting the last time we played. Roy gets _vicious_.”

“Fair enough. This is supposed to be fun, anyway.”

“How do you play?” Damian asked.

“Basically, you say three statements about yourself: two true things and one lie. Everyone else has to guess what’s true and what’s a lie.”

Damian nodded. “So it’s a test of ability. I’m sure to win; my skills of deception are unmatched.”

“Sure,” Steph said. “I can go first; gimme a second to think about it.” She really did think hard about what she was going to say. These weren’t friends from summer camp; the Waynes were practically professional liars. She would have to work to really impress them. “Okay, here we go. One: Cass and I once shoplifted 75 dollars worth of E.L.F. makeup from CVS. Two: I’ve been banned from every IHOP in Gotham. And three: I once slapped Bruce, hard, and got away with it.” She grinned triumphantly at their collective stunned expressions.

Tim recovered first. “The second one’s the lie,” he said.

Steph groaned. “I fuckin’ hate you. You’re not supposed to get it right on the first try. How do you even do it?”

Tim grinned. “Just special like that.” Steph swatted at him with her palm.

“Wait. The shoplifting I get. But you _slapped_ Bruce? Bruce Wayne?” Jason looked like Christmas had come early.

“The one and only.”

“ _Why?_ ”

Steph shrugged. “He was being an asshole.”

“Tt. I don’t doubt it. Conversing with Father can often be likened to pulling teeth.”

“Man, your teenage rebellion is gonna be legendary,” Jason said.

“I shall go next,” Damian declared. “Surely I will give Drake more of a challenge than _you_.” He paused for only a second. “One: I speak over 30 languages near-fluently, including four dialects of Mandarin, Hebrew, and Thai. Two: I’m nationally ranked in Super Smash Brothers. Three: I once asked Father to acquire a tiger for me to keep as a pet, not because I wanted one, but because I wanted to watch Father squirm.”

Challenge indeed. Steph had ideas, and clearly, Jason did too; he tried to say _something_ , but Tim barrelled right over him. “Nice try, demon brat,” Tim said. “First one’s the lie.”

Damian narrowed his eyes. “What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t doubt that you speak over 30 languages, but Hebrew’s not one of them,” Tim said with conviction. “Mentioning specific languages was your downfall; you should have kept it vague.”

“You’re correct,” Damian growled. He looked like the distance and the combined barrier of Steph and the sleeping bags were the only things keeping him from snapping Tim in half.

“Super Smash Bros?” Steph managed, a distraction as much as a genuinely baffled inquiry. “Nationally ranked?”

“Indeed.” Damian offered no further information, and Steph didn’t push her luck.

“You asked for a tiger?” Jason said. “I assume B said no.”

“Of course. Even if he had acquiesced I would have withdrawn my request.” Damian smirked. “Watching him come up with an excuse was highly entertaining. His expression when I refuted his every attempt was even more so.”

Jason laughed. “I’ll say it again: your teenage rebellion. Gonna be the stuff of legends.” He straightened up a bit. “My turn, kids. Chew on this. One: I once got drunk at a gala and spilled an edited version of my life story to Taylor Swift. Two: I’ve wrecked almost one million dollars worth of Bruce’s cars. Three: I’m wanted for public indecency in a certain sector of the galaxy.”

“The last one,” Steph said. It was just instinct, but Tim and Damian both nodded.

“Steph’s right,” Tim said.

Jason made a frustrated noise. “You have no way of knowing my criminal status anywhere other than Earth.”

“We know you’ve never left the planet,” Damian countered.

“ _How?_ ”

“B’s got a tracker on you,” Tim said. “Sends out an alert whenever you go somewhere the algorithm’s deemed suspicious. Space would definitely count.” Tim snickered. “The thing’s pretty specific. Sometimes when we know you’re on a job Cass and I sit down with popcorn and watch you scurry around on the screen. We like to imagine you dodging bullets; it’s good for the soul.”

“I’m going to _kill_ him,” Jason seethed. “We might as well keep this fire going; I’ve got a couple more bodies to throw on.”

“Bodies?” Steph said, emphasizing the plural.

“Don’t think you and Cass are off the hook, Replacement. Does the term ‘invasion of privacy’ mean nothing to you?”

“It means nothing to Tim,” Steph said. “Can confirm.”

Tim winced. “If I tell you where the tracker is will you rethink killing Cass in cold blood? She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Maybe. What about you?”

“You can certainly _try_ killing me.”

Steph stopped that line of conversation before it could go any further. “You know Taylor Swift?”

“In passing. I drank some whiskey, made some bad decisions, one thing led to another...” Jason smirked. “She wrote a song about me.”

“You _banged_ Taylor Swift?”

“What? No. We just talked.”

“I can’t tell if I’m relieved or not.”

They turned that over in their minds for a moment. “Guess I’m the only one left,” Tim said.

Steph groaned. “Can we skip you?”

“No way. This is my kind of game. Here goes.” Steph held her breath. “One: the longest my parents have ever stayed with me in Gotham is when half of Drake Manor had to be reconstructed because I set fire to it while trying to make pasta. Two: Catwoman gave me her phone number when I was nine, and once asked me to be her apprentice. And three: I almost got expelled from boarding school in seventh grade for running an underground poker ring. The pot included prewritten essays, energy drinks that weren’t legal in the US, hard drugs, and answer sheets for every standardized test administered in New Jersey.”

Jason and Damian seemed at a loss for words, and Steph didn’t blame them. She had no fucking clue what the lie was; Tim delivered every statement in a calm monotone, and his lack of tells had never been so apparent. Why had she even suggested this game? Tim’s smirk at their silence made her grind her teeth in frustration.

“The first one’s the lie,” Jason tried. “We would’ve noticed if half of Drake Manor was on fire.”

“Would you?” Jason looked away. He obviously had no confidence in his answer.

“It’s the second one,” Steph said without conviction. “There’s no way you’ve been just chatting with Catwoman since you were nine. She would have chased you off if she saw you, not given you her phone number. And trying to make you an apprentice? Forget it. You wish.”

“Is that your final answer?” Tim asked. He was _enjoying_ this, the sadist.

“Brown is incorrect,” Damian declared. “The final statement is the lie. There is no way you had the intelligence, resources, and organizational skills to run an operation such as the one you described.”

Steph shook her head. “No, I think that one’s true. Tim’s got a rap sheet a mile long at GA; I don’t doubt he got into trouble even in middle school. It’s the second one,” she repeated.

“Do you really want to know? Maybe I should just leave it a secret. Keep you guessing.”

“Sadistic asshole,” Steph accused. “Just tell us already.”

Tim smirked. “Jason’s right,” he said. “First one's the lie.” Jason pumped his fist in triumph.

Steph shrieked. “I hate you! You know Catwoman and you’ve never told me? Since you were _nine_? How did you even meet?”

Tim shrugged. “Caught her sneaking into my house. She didn’t think anyone was home; I scared the shit out of her. I let her take whatever she wanted, though. We got along. I used to text her whenever my parents brought home a stolen artifact; I would upgrade the security when I knew she was coming around; give her some practice, you know? We had fun,” he reminisced. “She was the first secret identity I figured out; recognized the way she spoke and moved from some gala or another. I have no idea why I turned down her apprenticeship offer; I should see if that’s a standing thing.”

“I don’t know,” Steph said. “Wouldn’t that put you and SB on opposite sides of the game?”

Tim smirked. “Might make it more fun,” he said. Steph feigned gagging.

“Introduce me to Catwoman,” Damian demanded. Tim looked at him oddly.

“She’s his favorite vigilante,” Steph stage-whispered to Tim.

“I admire her skill,” Damian insisted. “I would like to pick her brain on any manner of things.”

“You just wanna meet all her cats,” Steph accused.

“That too,” Damian admitted, clearing thinking there was no use denying it, lest he tries to claim he _didn’t_ want to meet Catwoman’s cats, which would be an obvious lie no matter how you swing it.

“I wanna meet Catwoman too,” Jason said. “She’s a certified badass. Keeps Gotham safe _and_ keeps the police and the upper class on their toes. Too useful to arrest and too criminal to support. Would love to know how she manages that balancing act.”

“You’re introducing me too,” Steph said, leaving no room for debate.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Whatever. She says yes, I’ll arrange a meet-and-greet. But only if she agrees. I’m not going to spring you guys on her without warning; no one deserves that.”

Jason began pestering Tim about the location of the tracker, but Steph’s mind was already wandering; she was exhausted, physically and mentally. Steph stared into the fire and thought about Tim’s promise to introduce them. This wouldn’t be the last time the four of them were together. She smiled slightly, and the fire flickered back, warm and friendly; Steph accepted its embrace and drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs Taylor Swift has written about Jason Todd: look what you made me do, my tears ricochet, haunted... I could go on.
> 
> Drop a comment if you liked the chapter! Final part will be up... whenever I write it. No more than a week <3


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